Endless Thread

By WBUR

Technology

What's Endless Thread about?

Endless Thread, a new podcast from WBUR and Reddit, delves into Reddit’s vast communities to explore some of the most compelling stories the internet has to offer.

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LAST EPISODE

Endless Thread Presents: An...

01.19.2021

Today, we present episode one of Anything for Selena, a new podcast from WBUR and Futuro Studios. Growing up along the US-Mexico border, Maria Garcia felt torn between her two identities as Mexican and American. But then, something changed her ...

Endless Thread episodes:

01.19.2021 Endless Thread Presents: Anything For Selena Today, we present episode one of Anything for Selena, a new podcast from WBUR and Futuro Studios. Growing up along the US-Mexico border, Maria Garcia felt torn between her two identities as Mexican and American. But then, something changed her ...
01.12.2021 Update: Things Are (Still) Bad In the aftermath of a violent mob storming the U.S. Capitol building, we got back in touch with Indi Samarajiva. Indi's a writer who lived through the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, and he was featured in "Things ...
01.07.2021 A Special Announcement Endless Thread is currently on break cooking up our next season, but we're getting back in touch with a special announcement. Donate Now: wbur.org/socks
12.17.2020 Endless Thread Presents: Mystery of the Mullet While we're on break working on a new season, we recommend checking out Decoder Ring. In each episode, Decoder Ring explores a cultural question, object, or habit; examines its history; and tries to figure out what it means and why ...
12.10.2020 Encore: Black Lives Matter IRL And Online Endless Thread is on break so we're sharing one of our favorite episodes from the past year. We published it back on Juneteenth 2020 after asking for stories that caught our listeners' attention at the height of the George Floyd ...
12.04.2020 A Trip Down Memory Lane It's that time of the year again: Endless Thread is going on a winter break. But don't miss us too much. We'll be back in 2021 with a fresh, new, weird, and wonderful version of the show. Before we say ...
11.27.2020 Encore: All You Can Eat... And Then Some (Updates!) Chicken patrol. Tiny plates. Purses lined with plastic bags. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Endless Thread re-releases "All You Can Eat," an episode that peeks behind the curtain of the strange world of all-you-can-eat buffets, from the strategies buffet owners ...
11.19.2020 Niall Needs A Friend A month ago, we received an email that really caught our attention. It was from a listener in Ireland named Niall, who has been feeling isolated during the pandemic. He was wondering if we could help him make some new ...
11.13.2020 Today You, Tomorrow Me 10 years ago, Justin found himself on the side of the road with a blown out tire. Hours went by and no one stopped to help. But just as he was about to give up, something happened that changed Justin ...
11.06.2020 Low Stakes Hot Takes We all have that one opinion — that firmly held, low stakes, non-political belief. You know the one. It's usually met with (low stakes) outrage whenever you dare to say it out loud. Well, we asked you, our listeners, to ...
10.29.2020 Endless Dread: An Uninvited House Guest And A Fake Doctor Ben and Amory swap terrifying tales from Reddit, featuring an uninvited house guest and a doctor with an unusual fetish. Happy Halloween!
10.28.2020 Bonus: 'Brainwashed' This past Spring, Endless Thread released a series called “Madness: The Secret Mission for Mind Control and the People Who Paid the Price.” If you missed it, you should go back and listen! A new series from CBC Podcasts, "Brainwashed," ...
10.22.2020 Things Are Bad With increasing political divide and heightened civil unrest in the United States, many fear that it will culminate in a second civil war. We explore the likelihood of that scenario and hear from someone who thinks America is already in ...
10.15.2020 Endless Dread: Backrooms And Ghostly Photos In the spirit of Halloween, the Endless Thread team shares spooky stories from Reddit, including the origins of a classic horror movie SFX, the creepy world of r/backrooms, and the mystery surrounding three photos found on someone’s phone.
10.09.2020 Girls Trip Randi-Lynn thought she was going on a relaxing family vacation to the mountains. Just a few days later, she was hiding in a bathroom and frantically posting on Reddit, asking for help. The headline of her post? "I think I ...
10.02.2020 QAnon Casualties For nearly two years, a Redditor named Jitarth Jadeja got deep into QAnon, the Far Right conspiracy theory founded on the idea that President Trump is secretly waging war against a satanic cabal of pedophiles who control the world. “I ...
09.24.2020 Snacktime: Spiders Are Bros Spiders... even the word is unsettling for some of us. But the r/spiderbro community on Reddit is a place where you just might gain a new appreciation for arachnids -- from the petite and unassuming, to the big and hairy.
09.17.2020 Unsent Letters The unsent letter. We all have one, half-composed in our heads or fully-formed as an email draft. If you’re really poetic, it might be on a piece of paper, yellowing in a drawer. Whatever form these letters take, they go ...
09.10.2020 Snacktime: Odd Jobs Do people say, "That's a thing??," when you tell them what you do for a living? Then you probably have an odd job. This week, Endless Thread tips its hat to you as we discuss the odd jobs of Redditors.
09.03.2020 Tight Squeeze You might not think about caves in the same breath as you do the deep ocean or outer space, but you probably should. There are approximately 70,000 caves in the United States alone, but the vast majority are inaccessible to ...
08.28.2020 Snacktime: Dad Jokes The spotlight is on r/DadJokes, which -- you guessed it -- is home to the most pun-derful, cheesy-but-lovable comedic material the internet has to offer. Starring the experts: Ben & Amory's DADS!
08.21.2020 Angel's Glow There's a Civil War legend that dates back to April of 1862, in the aftermath of the Battle of Shiloh. Supposedly, when night fell on thousands of wounded soldiers stranded on the battlefield, something strange happened. Some of their wounds ...
08.13.2020 Snacktime: Zelda And Zebra Plants Author John Boyne and Jeff the zebra plant take center stage in this edition of snacktime. Also, Ben and Amory realize they share an affinity for... melon ballers?
08.06.2020 Ghost Town In the summer of 2018, Brent Underwood got a text in the middle of the night from a friend saying, "Look at this ghost town for sale!" Within a month, Brent had purchased Cerro Gordo, California, an abandoned silver mining ...
07.30.2020 Snacktime: Harry Potter, Billie Eilish, And 'Soup Tubes' Ben, Amory, and Josh share some of the most memorable Reddit posts of late, from a "magical" parenting decision to a very bizarre business idea.
07.23.2020 Randonauts r/randonauts is a fast-growing community of Redditors who use random, quantum-generated coordinates to go on real-life adventures. But what happens when those random coordinates lead you straight to a grisly crime scene?
07.17.2020 Snacktime: Llama At A Wedding “What are the dimensions of an adult llama?” asked a Redditor called Mrs. Sam Handwich in the "No Stupid Questions" community. "I've been hired to make a tuxedo for a llama and I don't have its measurements," she added. We ...
07.09.2020 Giddyup Images of Black men and women riding horses at protests around the country have been going viral. But the history of Black cowboys goes all the way back to the creation of the American West. The Endless Thread team digs ...
07.02.2020 Encore: We Want Plates + Pile Of Crockery Endless Thread is re-releasing a crown jewel from the archives. It's the team's epic adventure to locate a mountain of dishware in the middle of the woods and, truly, it's even more ridiculous than it sounds. Originally released as a ...
06.25.2020 Shrinkflation From the supermarket to the housing market, products are getting smaller but prices are not. Why is this happening? And can it be stopped before the toilet paper roll disappears right before our very… reaching hands?
06.18.2020 Black Lives Matter IRL And Online Over the last few weeks, Endless Thread has been asking for stories that have caught your attention as millions of people around the country and around the world have come together to protest systemic racism and police brutality. Today, Juneteenth ...
06.11.2020 Bonus: Making 'Madness' "Madness," our 5-part series about the history of CIA-funded mind-control experiments, involved a lot of research and a lot of interviews -- most of which you heard excerpts from in the series, but some of which… you didn’t. Or, at ...
06.04.2020 Endless Thread Presents: Truth Be Told The Endless Thread team has been watching as protests and police brutality have broken out in cities around the country, and around the world. We are working on covering these events thoughtfully and carefully. If you have a story or ...
05.28.2020 Endless Thread Happy Hour Join the Endless Thread team on Friday, June 5th, at 5pm ET for a happy-hour Zoom discussion of our 5-part, in-depth series "Madness: The Secret Mission for Mind Control and the People Who Paid the Price." We'll answer your questions ...
05.21.2020 Madness, Pt. 5: The Unreachable Summit Dr. Ewen Cameron wanted to win a Nobel Prize for his work in psychiatry. He never got one. He died of a heart attack while climbing a mountain in the Adirondacks in 1967. So, we don’t have access to Cameron's ...
05.14.2020 Madness, Pt. 4: Pursuit Of Justice In the early 1980s, victims of Dr. Ewen Cameron’s mind-altering experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute began a slow process of finding each other and building a case against the CIA for funding Cameron's work. The legacy of that case ...
05.07.2020 Madness, Pt. 3: Subproject 68 As the fear of communism was rising in the U.S. after World War II, government officials set their sights on developing a weapon that sounds straight out of science fiction: mind control. This effort was led by the CIA in ...
04.30.2020 Madness, Pt. 2: Brave New World Hundreds of people who were experimented on at the Allan Memorial Institute over the course of two decades are all connected to one man: Dr. Ewen Cameron. In this episode, we look at how Cameron rose to prominence in his ...
04.23.2020 Madness, Pt. 1: The Sleep Room In our first episode, we share powerful accounts of abuse at a psychiatric hospital in Montreal, and we introduce the renowned doctor who conducted these disturbing experiments on his unwitting patients. *** "Madness" unravels the shocking history of CIA-funded mind-control ...
04.15.2020 Zoom Party This Friday! This Friday, April 17th, at 7pm EST, Endless Thread is hosting a Zoom party! Join co-hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson and producer Josh Swartz for a little trivia, an exclusive sneak preview of their upcoming series, "Madness," and ...
04.10.2020 A Parent, A Nurse, And A Patient Another look at the far-reaching impact of the coronavirus pandemic. In this episode, we hear from a parent who recently had an infant in the NICU, a nurse who fears for his safety, and someone who recently recovered from COVID-19.
04.02.2020 Zombies And Preppers We speak with Max Brooks about the viral PSA he made with his dad, Mel Brooks, and how his zombie apocalypse novel, World War Z, has become eerily relevant during the coronavirus pandemic. Then, we chat with FrugalChef13, a "prepper," ...
03.27.2020 How Reddit's Coronavirus Community Became A Global Lifeline Redditors share how they're coping with the coronavirus pandemic. We also take an in-depth look at r/coronavirus, which has fast become one of the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and reliable sources of information for this constantly developing global story.
03.12.2020 Endless Thread Presents: 'Madness' Endless Thread presents a special series called "Madness: The secret mission for mind control and the people who paid the price." Get a sneak peek of the series by listening to the trailer now. New episodes coming soon. "Madness" unravels ...
02.28.2020 Encore: Call of the Void When you’re in a high place, peering over a ledge, do you ever get that super weird feeling that you should just... jump? This is a real scientific phenomenon that a lot of people experience, and it has a name: ...
02.13.2020 Snacktime: A Fairy Tale Proposal In honor of Valentine's Day, Amory tells Ben a snack-size story about a feast-size grand gesture that has left millions of people all over the world wishing they could re-do their marriage proposals.
01.30.2020 Double Life 92-year-old Robert Middelmann uncovered a secret about himself when he was very young. Keeping it was a matter of life and death. But, after many years, Robert decided to share that secret, along with the rest of his extraordinary life ...
01.23.2020 Snacktime: Snektime Ben and Amory dissscusss sssome facsssinating ssstories about sssnakes.
01.16.2020 'I Was Abducted' Monique has always known she was abducted as a child, but specific details about what happened, and why, have been elusive. It wasn’t until she posted to Reddit that she found real leads and painful memories started flooding back.
01.09.2020 Snacktime: Bushfires and Books Ben and Amory discuss a Reddit deep-dive about the Australian wildfires and one man's very, very long reading list.

Older episodes

Endless Thread

What's Endless Thread about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Endless Thread episodes:

Endless Thread Presents: Anything For Selena

Update: Things Are (Still) Bad

A Special Announcement

Endless Thread Presents: Mystery of the Mullet

Encore: Black Lives Matter IRL And Online

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Encore: All You Can Eat... And Then Some (Updates!)

Niall Needs A Friend

Today You, Tomorrow Me

Low Stakes Hot Takes

Endless Dread: An Uninvited House Guest And A Fake Doctor

Bonus: 'Brainwashed'

Things Are Bad

Endless Dread: Backrooms And Ghostly Photos

Girls Trip

QAnon Casualties

Snacktime: Spiders Are Bros

Unsent Letters

Snacktime: Odd Jobs

Tight Squeeze

Snacktime: Dad Jokes

Angel's Glow

Snacktime: Zelda And Zebra Plants

Ghost Town

Snacktime: Harry Potter, Billie Eilish, And 'Soup Tubes'

Randonauts

Snacktime: Llama At A Wedding

Giddyup

Encore: We Want Plates + Pile Of Crockery

Shrinkflation

Black Lives Matter IRL And Online

Bonus: Making 'Madness'

Endless Thread Presents: Truth Be Told

Endless Thread Happy Hour

Madness, Pt. 5: The Unreachable Summit

Madness, Pt. 4: Pursuit Of Justice

Madness, Pt. 3: Subproject 68

Madness, Pt. 2: Brave New World

Madness, Pt. 1: The Sleep Room

Zoom Party This Friday!

A Parent, A Nurse, And A Patient

Zombies And Preppers

How Reddit's Coronavirus Community Became A Global Lifeline

Endless Thread Presents: 'Madness'

Encore: Call of the Void

Snacktime: A Fairy Tale Proposal

Double Life

Snacktime: Snektime

'I Was Abducted'

Snacktime: Bushfires and Books

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